Character Assassination
by Sarah the nerd
Summary: Mal Young's sister was a witch. Mal Young's sister was murdered when Dolores Umbridge took over the Ministry. And the handful of Muggles who know of the wizarding world? They're starting to get mad. And they're starting to get organised.
1. The Great Bad Thing

**Character Assassination**  
><em>1. The Great Bad Thing<em>

When I was nine my sister got her letter, envelope via owl, and I didn't. And, yeah, I don't mean to sound self-pitying here, but we did _everything _together, me and her, and now she was a part of this great magical destiny and I wasn't.

This isn't going to be one of those stories of a family torn apart by jealousy, by the way. Ours was torn apart by something else.

I'm Mal. My sister is Roseanna. Mal is short for Malory, but it never worked for me. Roseanna's the witch. Got her letter when she was eleven, was so excited, ran off into a world that cut people open and ate their souls.

But anyway, if you're reading this, witch people, you _know _how it all went down. This is just what happened to us, my the grand scheme of things it's not important, but who cares about grand schemes anymore? It was grand schemes that got all of us into that mess.

My family...

Grandad. First name Jeremy. Grandad always came first, he was the rock, the glue, whatever. He kicked arse, Grandad did, was so old and lost his wife before I was born but kept kicking.  
>Roseanna. You know her.<br>Mum. Always wanted to be a mum, got pregnant at nineteen, and after Dad died (I was eighteen months old) she threw herself into it like the Queen and President all in one. School letters were always read, forms always signed, school lunches packed. We never had much money but she'd work and work and take us to Disneyland for a weekend and one time, to Spain.

I had a damn good childhood, for the most part. The day the letter came it was over.

* * *

><p>So, Lord Voldemort...<p>

Actually, you know, he wasn't our main problem, he was too much like something fictional. He was a dark lord, and he was doing what a dark lord was supposed to. He was like Sauron from Lord of the Rings, or something, his reach extended all over the place but _he_was barely real.

Fuck yeah, I've read _Lord of the Rings_.

It was the people who weren't dark or lords who were the problem. Who were the _worst_. The ordinary people, who happened to have magic, who wanted to kill everyone who didn't. Everyone _related _to everyone who didn't. Those people with cloaks and wands and furious eyes, I'd like to say I see them in my nightmares, but I don't actually.

They weren't _us_, those ordinary wizards, not at the beginning, they were like...okay, I'm gonna Godwin's Law my own story here, but they were Nazi Germany. You know, they stood by while horrible, horrible things went down. And they ended up being a lesson to the world, and everyone knows that history as the Great Bad Thing, and if it hadn't happened, you know what, we'd have made it up. And to me it was like all the witches and the wizards who knew what happened and did nothing were just _characters _in some history book. Not real. Not us. Like the Nazis.

Nope. They were totally us.

I should begin at the beginning.

* * *

><p>Roseanna got her letter. Mum and Grandad thought it was a joke and kept thinking that until the witches and wizards turned up, a bunch of robed bearded weirdos (and that was just the women) on a Milton Keynes housing estate. Even then Mum and Grandad took some convincing, and it was a demonstration what did it. They made our dishes wash themselves, made the lamp play music and the radio light up, and through it all I watched and fought my real feelings, thought about being <em>superhuman <em>but my sister was instead. I cried that night. Hey, I was _nine_. And Superman and Spider-Man adorned my bedroom wall.

Anyway, that was a strange time in my life, let's face it. I got to see the hidden platform at King's Cross, but that was as far into the magicland as I got. Before Roseanna got on that train Mum pushed me forward with the present I was holding. It was some of my things I didn't want, toys and shoes and a make-up set given to me by a friend who didn't know Mum wouldn't let me wear make-up til I was thirteen. Mum had spent our money on everything Roseanna needed for her education, you see, and there was hardly anything left, except the money still set aside for _my _education. So we cleaned out our cupboards and repainted and polished and wrapped, and presented this to Roseanna before she stepped into her new life. She took the parcel, we smiled, she smiled-

-years passed.

She was sixteen when Dolores Umbridge started killing people. One year younger than Harry Potter, who I knew everything about at this point. And I knew about the Dementors. It was _them _in my nightmares. Those things that sucked out your soul, that seperated you from loved ones _forever _and not just for a lifetime.

* * *

><p>Yeah, she died, did Roseanna. She wasn't all human and she wasn't all witch, so they killed her. They almost did worse.<p>

They gave her and many others a trial, I know that much, a joke of a trial. Accused them of stealing magic, told them they would die for it. And Dolores Umbridge gave the orders, sitting up there in a little box, and all the people I talked to told me no-one stopped her, no-one spoke out, no-one did _anything_. All that magic, all those superpowers, and no-one even moved.

My sister, before her arrest, had grabbed a few things. Stuffed them into her pocket- a picture of Mum and Dad's wedding day, a ring from Grandad, a small make-up mirror that was all that was left of the make-up set I'd gifted her when I was nine. One of each of us, and it didn't save her.

She fought, though, my sister. Her wand had been taken, so she fought like a regular human. But she couldn't win, not against so many, and she was forced into the room where they removed the souls, where breathing but dead bodies littered the floor.

And she had fallen on the way, you see, as she was dragged through the building on her hands and knees, still fighting. The glass mirror in her pocket broke and it dug into her leg, and she tried to reach for it, so she could slash and stab, but she couldn't get to it...

And there was so much screaming in that room...

And my sister looked up, and saw what was above her, what was about to swoop down and take her soul. My older sister, that clever girl, forced to her feet-

-she took my broken mirror from her pocket, slit her own throat, and fell down dead before they got her.


	2. She Didn't Die

**Character Assassination**  
><em>2. She Didn't Die<em>

When we got the news we expected it, we knew she was in trouble from early on. We knew about the trials and the killings. People kept in touch with us, you see. There was this one girl, this one brilliant girl, Nymphadora. She's dead now. She was a witch and _awesome_. She could change her hair and face, she was a sort of shapeshifter, not many witches can do that, I think. Anyway, she died with her husband at that last great fight.

I don't know how we survived after Roseanna's death. Dora helped us, provided alibis, to this day our friends and family think she died in a car crash. And she got the body back so we'd have something to bury. They got a lot of bodies back, Dora said, with so many in so _much_trouble and pain who would miss a body here or there? She got drunk once with me. I was fourteen then, not allowed to drink, but I did and all night we sat on the dustbins in the alley near the road and watched the traffic and the stars.

I really wish she wasn't dead.

There were others, too, other witches and wizards. With most of them I never found out if they survived or not. But these are all stories for a different time, maybe. The thing is-

-Dolores Umbridge killed my sister. And years passed, years, and I grew up the way Roseanna never would, I had boyfriends and cigerettes and sex. I didn't get to college, but I knew I wasn't stupid even if my careers advisor didn't, and I got a job in a hotel and then in a cinema. Got an assistant manager job, not too shabby actually, and I stayed with Mum and Grandad in our tiny little house, still in my old room, next to Roseanna's. And I shouldn't have found out, but I did.

Because Dolores Umbridge didn't die. Lots of good people died, I know because I heard about that last battle from the people who didn't- but Dolores, the evil witch, she lived. She was locked up in a prison, a special magic prison, but she lived and my sister died. And then, I was nineteen, I had outlived my sister, when I heard.

There's a message board, you see. Bit like Facebook. Facebook for magic.

Yeah. Sounds nuts, right? But there is a internet forum for the non-magic families and friends of wizards. Around 2001 it appeared, some guy in London who we knew only as John (someone close to the Prime Minister, I later discovered, who wasn't a wizard but knew about the world) sussing out that us Muggles who knew we _were _Muggles might sometimes want to talk.

Muggle. Man, what a label. It sounds so dumb. And don't think there weren't people pissed that we'd been _labelled_. Oh, there was talk of revolution or talk of war from the odd weirdo, but it was always stifled because we figured the witches and wizards watched. Those people with world-destroying power, how could _we_ foil _them_? So we, those magic-less people on the Internet who made grand plans, carried on without a name for ages, because we didn't want the one the wizards gave us. We were They Who Must Not Be Named. No-one was given the password to the forum without a checking process that could take months, but me and Mum were among the first members. We talked about the war. About our loved ones. It was a forum for the bereaved, and we knew it.

Anyway, as I got older I never checked back there much, same as I never went into Roseanna's old room. But one day I did. And there it was, a post dated a few weeks ago, Dolores Umbridge wasn't in prison anymore, she'd made a deal, she was out and about and free to do as she wished. The thread was posted by a woman called 'MG1', and I found out later she was Hermione Granger's mother. But that's another story. Actually it's the same story, just later on.

There aren't words, there really aren't, to describe how you feel when you discover your sister's murderer, a _mass_ murderer, is free. So I won't bother with them. I'll just say, I called Mum and Grandad over, and we all looked at it, and both of them were so quiet, and then Mum let out this_ sound_...

We sent an email to John. It was true, we'd been betrayed. The wizard world had taken Roseanna, had killed countless people, and had freed the one who killed them. And we were Muggles. And we were powerless. And we were angry.

Anyway, Grandad made the first move, went upstairs, got his old gun.

"No, Dad!" Mum said when he came downstairs with it. "Have you lost your mind?"

"I'm heading that way, Sharon," Grandad said fiercely, and he put the gun on the computer desk, where it could be seen by all three of us.

"Let's do it," I said.

"Mal!" Mum said, appalled.

"You're thinking it. All of us are. The bitch killed Roseanna."

"We can't shoot someone!"

"Who would know?" I asked, my hand inches from the revolver. "She's not...you know, she doesn't live in the human world, she's not _human_, she doesn't have a bank account or a passport or..." But even as I said this I felt like a psycho, I was talking about _killing someone_. Me who'd grown up reading Batman comics, who'd watched as he _never_killed the Joker. Who'd dreamed about being a superhero when suddenly there were wizards instead. And I was scared, I was suddenly shit-scared of myself, but I kept talking. "No-one would know who she was, she'd just go rot in a morgue somewhere, if they ever found her..."

"Mal," Mum said again. And she looked at me with such a freaky expression. "I know how you feel, sweetie. But we can't kill her..."

"Sorry," was all I muttered. And I felt like a part of me had actually _died_. Another part, I mean. "I'm just...angry. Really fucking angry."

"We all are," said Grandad. But he put the gun away.

And it didn't finish there.

* * *

><p>A few days later I got an email.<p>

_hey mal. it's me, khalid. remember me?_

I did remember him, actually, and he probably knew I did, but he was a shy one, was Khalid. He lived in London, and I'd been down there a few times to meet him. We were in a similar position, you see. He had a sister...

...she was Kissed, alright? Before she was ever even _kissed_, she was Kissed. She was _twelve fucking years old_. She's in a hospital now, one of ours. A 'muggle' one. Permanant vegative state, the doctors say. But we know better. I've seen Khalid and his brother and their parents watching her breathe and just not being able to fathom it. They were quite religious, they were. I don't know if they are anymore.

Anyway. We all have sad stories. His is one of the saddest.

I emailed him back.

_wats up?_

He answered:

_Umbridge's out. They let her go._

I won't bore you with the email back-and-forth, but yeah, we agreed to meet up again. Just me and him. Mum didn't want to come and Grandad didn't either. Both were kinda lost in their own thing, Mum staring at Roseanna's pictures on the wall as if hoping to vanish into one. Grandad not telling me where he'd hidden his gun. Little things. We were fucked, I knew it, we'd drown in grief once more.

So me and Khalid ended up in the Milton Keynes shopping centre, slumped by the fountain, McDonalds burgers in our laps. He was staring into space. I was staring at him.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"For what?" he said.

"I don't know. For the world being shit."

He continued to stare. He was watching the people going past and I figured he was wondering the same thing I was: which of these people are witches? Which of them could command a creature to _suck my soul out_?

"You don't have to be sorry," he said. "Weird thing to say."

I shrugged. A gust of wind blew spray onto my coat.

"I hate them," I said. "The people who did it, and the people who stood by and watched it all happen."

"I know," said Khalid. Then he stood and hurled his french fries into a nearby bin, and turned to me and said, "We should kill her."

Another gust of wind blew my chip packet and my discarded lettice from my lap. It fluttered down the courtyard, got stuck against the shopping centre doors. "What?"

"It's justice," Khalid said quietly. "She should have spent her life in prison. Now she's not going to."

I stared at him. And the wind blew a little harder. "I've been thinking the same thing, we all have, me and my mum and Grandad. I just never expected _you_-"

"You never really knew me all that well," Khalid said, although without much of an accusation. "I want her punished. Me and Dad and my brother Hakan, between us we have the resources. We want to bring some- some _balance _back."

I thought of my sister, of the broken mirror and the broken lives. "I can't kill someone. I actually thought about it, I can't."

"_You_don't have to," Khalid said, sounding geninuely horrified at the idea. "Not you. Someone else, someone who doesn't...mind."

And we were quiet for a few seconds.

"You mean like a hitman?" I finally asked.

The wind had gone out of Khalid's sails. "S'alright. Doesn't really matter. Let's drop it."

So we did for the moment. But it _did _matter. And bit by bit, an army came to us. Unfortunately it was the wrong kind of army.


	3. People I Meet On The Internet Are Jerks

_Warning: This was written many months before the Norway shootings, but it's taken on a sudden worrying significance now. Essentially, there is talk of killing children for political reasons, although no-one actually carries out that act._

**Character Assassination**  
><em>3. People I Meet On The Internet Are Jerks<em>

People on the internet were angry. (I heard they often are.)

Hermione Granger's mother posted a message. _My daughter is fighting to put that woman back where she belongs. She can do it. Have faith. _But I suppose no-one had much faith, because the _names _Hermione was called. I felt a bit sorry for her, that clever woman I didn't know, although I had the feeling that by the laws of the universe, I shouldn't because she was one of _them_.

But I didn't think like that. I was pretty sure I'd never thought like that. That was why everything had got so bad to begin with, the them and us thing.

_Stupid bitch should die in a fire and rot in hell_, someone wrote about Hermione as the days dragged on. And then later, _We can't put up with this anymore. In the old days they used to burn witches. _I wondered if they knew, the witches and wizards, how many people wanted them dead. I supposed that was why they kept things such a secret. They had magic but we had _bombs_.

_Nuke them_, someone said, _they've killed thousands of us. And we'd get away with it. Can they build nukes? Can they even build aeroplanes? Turn us into toads, but we'd still have the Internet. _And I sat back at the computer and I had a _we're-fucked_sort of feeling. I knew something was coming. I could picture it, a whole horde of helpless non-magic humans somehow marching into Hogwarts School and getting mowed down with spells. Maybe. Probably.

So I wasn't surprised when, a whole two months after Umbridge was freed, Aaron the American stepped in. Aaron the American, who was actually just Aaron, was the only guy on the forum from the States. The US managed alright during the wizard war, you see, came out of it fine. But Aaron's twin daughters were witches. He moved to England to send them to Hogwarts, because they'd heard Hogwarts was the best and wanted to go. You can guess where this is going: they're both dead. Not Kissed, thankfully, but dead.

Aaron announced that Something Should Be Done.

_I lost my wife to cancer, I lost my daughters to monsters, I won't stand back anymore. Hogwarts School is a castle in Scotland, and castles, they BURN. We'll go to Scotland, we'll get terrorist on their asses, we'll send them a message. The children there can defend themselves, we're all VERY aware of that. we have no choice anymore, they masscred us, and now they've swept their crimes against humanity under the rug._

On the whole, people agreed with him.

I dunno if it was just the Umbridge thing which fired people up. I think people were just sick of...being _Muggles_. This magic stuff affected us and we didn't have even remotely a say in it. And people's kids had died, you can't expect anyone to act rationally if that happens. So something bad was going to happen. That was obvious.

* * *

><p>We'd never all met up before, us forum people. Obviously I'd met Khalid and his family, a few other people were friends, but there'd never been a big general meeting. One day when the Internet was down, and had been down for a few days, Khalid called me.<p>

"I need to talk to you," he said. "That American bloke..."

"Aaron."

"Yeah, Aaron...he's asked people to come see him at his house. Like a...party. A meeting. A sort of planning session."

"Oh," I said.

"Afraid so."

I sighed.

"He posted a message on the board a few days ago. I thought you'd have seen it," Khalid said.

"Internet's been down."

"Oh. Anyway, he's...this is bad, Mal." Khalid's voice was higher and more panicked. "Aaron and his supporters, they're planning to go to Scotland and dynamite the place. People are gonna get hurt. Maybe killed."

I twisted my hands around, because this was a Big Thing.

"How can he even find it? It's hidden from people like us."

"It looks like an abandoned castle," Khalid said, and I wondered if his sister had told him this. "There's meant to be spells on it and all sorts. But he thinks he can do it. Mal, he's basically declared _war_."

I looked around the house. Behind the glass of the kitchen window, I could see Mum. And Grandad would be asleep on the sofa in front of the TV.

"I don't think it's a war if the people you're fighting don't know it's a war."

"No, they call that a massacre, actually," Khalid said, and I remembered he was a politics student, top of the class, wanted to be Prime Minister. That Khalid was coming out now. "Innocent people will be hurt. Innocent _children_. We can't allow that to happen."

"No," I agreed. "We can't."

* * *

><p>Me and Khalid went to the meeting. It was in London, and Khalid met me at the train station. Night was falling, and we walked amongst the crowds and Khalid said, "It's weird that all this stuff, with magic and wizards is going on and none of these people know about it."<p>

"Yeah," I said.

We had to go past King's Cross, but neither of us looked at it. When we reached Aaron's house there were already a few people there, and a hard-faced woman opened the door to us.

"Names?" she asked.

"Khalid Abdel and Mal Young."

"Screen names?" she asked with a hint of impatience. "What you use on the message board."

"Um...Khalid and Mal."

She looked at us crossly and consulted a list. "Alright. Fine. Aaron's through in the living room."

We went through. Aaron's house was nice, clean, with pictures of two smiling girls on the wall that made my heart sink. In the living room there were a lot of people gathered, some of them clutching cups of tea, waiting for something to happen.

Aaron shook our hands. "Nice to meet you," he said, although clearly he didn't really know who we were. "Sit yourselves down...there's coffee in the kitchen...tea..."

Me and Khalid found chairs and sat down. We were the youngest people there, and as we looked at the adults it was obvious that most of them were nervous. There were a few who weren't, though...the woman who'd opened the door was glaring around at us, a blonde man with a denim jacket was consulting a weapons magazine, and an old man seemed to be...

"Khalid? That man has a machine gun."

"I know," he said, and resolutely stared ahead. Eventually a few more people turned up, took their places, and Aaron finally got started.

"We're most of us here cos we lost someone," he said. He didn't have much of an accent. "Me, I lost my girls. Brenda here, she lost her son. Matthew at the back, he lost his as well." Two people who I took to be Brenda and Matthew nodded. "And we can do _nothing_. We're voiceless. We're betrayed. The woman who sent our kids-" His voice cracked, "-to their _deaths _is free and well. We need to send these people a message. A violent one if needs be."

_If needs be_.

"What's your plan?" someone spoke up.

"Introduce yourself," Aaron told him. "Actually, we all should introduce ourselves."

We did. It didn't take long. Khalid mumbled his name, I told them all that my sister was dead, people explained themselves while staring at the floor and the man who'd just spoken gave his name as Kevin. Then finally we carried on.

"My son, Joe, he talked about Hogwarts non-stop," said Kevin, a far-away look in his eyes. "He said that it was protected by spells, that if any...anyone like us went there, they'd suddenly remember something they had to do and turn around again."

"I heard the same thing," said somebody else.

"How would we get around that?" someone asked. And I realised _Shit shit shit, they're seriously considering this. ALL OF THEM are considering this._

"I say we use a plane, fly over it, drop a bomb-"

"How can we do anything? They're all powerful..."

"How can we get near the castle?"

"MENTAL STRENGTH!" announced a voice, and we all turned to see the old man with the gun. He was standing up with the thing clasped in his hand. "Mental strength. When approaching the castle, you're going to have to fight and hard! Your brain will tell you to turn back, it'll tell you that your car's being stolen, that your house is on fire, that your parents are dying, and you have to fight it! Understand?"

Who'd disagree with an armed man? People nodded.

"Thank you, Mr Creevy," Aaron said. "Mr Creevy, everyone." Mr Creevy gave a grunt and sat himself down.

"So we're actually doing this, then?" I suddenly said.

People looked at me. I didn't look away. Which was good. And I figured I'd say it a second time. "We're doing this?"

"Yes," Aaron said. And then, "What're your concerns?"

"There's gonna be people in the castle," I said.

"People who can defend themselves."

"And they hit first!" someone said. "My daughter died because of them!"

Khalid spoke up. "Listen to yourselves! You're actually thinking of bombing a building full of children. You're _planning _it! People will die. Just think about it, please, just for a second!"

Silence. A very short silence. "He's right," I said loudly. "You're _psychos _to be planning this." And Aaron gave me a very angry look.

"Why did you two come to this meeting?" said the hard-faced woman cooly.

"We came to talk you out of it," I said. "You _dicks_."

"What you're planning is an act of terrorism," said Khalid.

"Well, you'd know all about that," said Aaron. I felt Khalid next to me tense up.

"If you're going to resort to cheap mud-slinging-" He took off his glasses, cleaned them, and I felt him shaking a bit. "We're going to report you to the police."

"They'll laugh," said Matthew, but he was looking more and more uncomfortable. So were some of the others. "If you start going on about wizards and witches..."

"We'll find a way," said Khalid.

"We're gonna go now," I said loudly, standing up. I looked at everyone. A few people looked sort of afraid, and I thought back to Roseanna, to the people who'd stood and done nothing while innocents got killed. "Who's coming?"

No-one else stood up. We left without a word. As we got to the end of the street I heard Khalid let out a breath.

"I don't like those people."

There was a bench by the road and we both collapsed onto it. "What do we do?" I asked.

"Going to the police might be our best bet. We'll say they're...anarchists. Who want to blow up old castles. Or something. We'll make something up."

It seemed a stupid idea, but the world in general seemed pretty stupid. We went home.


	4. The Normals

_Warning: This was written many months before the Norway shootings, but it's taken on a sudden worrying significance now. Essentially, there is talk of killing children for political reasons, although no-one actually carries out that act._

**Character Assassination**  
><em>4. The Normals<em>

As soon as me and Khalid got back to his place we did call the police, and we were fobbed off. We'd expected as much. Then we realised that the next train to Milton Keynes wasn't til after midnight, and I didn't feel like catching a train anyway, and we were at Khalid's house and his parents weren't...

"Dad won't let you sleep in my room," Khalid said, nervously.

"Why not? You're eighteen, it's up to you."

"He just won't like it." He blushed. "Look...you can have the spare room." And he took me to the spare room. It was all lilac and Barbies and there was a long pause before I said, "This is Leila's room, isn't it?"

Khalid winced at even hearing his sister's name. "It's the spare room now. We took all her stuff, took it to her hospital, it's not hers anymore."

"I'm not sleeping here, Khalid."

He sighed. We went to his room. He snatched some blankets from the bed and we went downstairs and he dumped them on the sofa.

"You've never had a girl here before, have you?" I said wearily.

"You're the only girl I know."

Still with my clothes on, I pulled the blankets over myself.

"Your parents are seeing Leila, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"You could have gone there. Instead of going to that stupid meeting thing."

Khalid said nothing. "I see her all the time," he finally said, very sadly. "I have to do my own thing, I have to _fight_."

I nodded.

"Eff off now, Khalid, I'm going to sleep."

So he left. And I just lay there in the dark. Khalid's parents didn't return and I thought of them sleeping by Leila's bed, praying for a long overdue miracle. And the sun was rising when I heard Khalid come downstairs.

"Are you asleep?" he whispered.

"Yes," I said.

"I thought the police would call back."

I shrugged in the gloom.

"We have to stop them," he said.

"I know."

Suddenly I felt him crawling on the blankets, coming towards me. "What're you _doing_?"

"I-"

He sort of fell on top of me, and I pushed him off. He tumbled to the floor and hastily stood up again. "What're _you _doing?"

"Khalid!"

"You wanted me to..._make love _to you!" He didn't have his glasses on, but I saw his hand twitch towards his face. "You did. I mean, didn't you? Mal?"

"That doesn't mean you have to do it!"

"But I wanted to! I mean, I know there's multiple reasons why I shouldn't but there are also reasons why I should! So I just thought..."

"You're a Muslim! You can't shag around before you get married!"

"Hakan did. Lots of my friends did. And I like you, you're the only girl I'm ever going to like, I know." But he was trailing off now. I stumbled off the sofa and turned the lights on. Khalid was wearing only his underpants and my top had fallen open in the night. We both looked fucking stupid.

The light in the room quickly changed things. "I don't want to sleep with you now," Khalid announced in a faintly pompous voice. "I can see it was a mistake."

"Whatever," I said, and got back under the blankets. Khalid opened the door and I heard him stomp upstairs. Then come down again. "Mal?" he whispered. "Mal, can we forget this ever happened? Can we still be friends?"

"Yes," I said. "Of course we bloody can. Now go back to bed. War's breaking out tomorrow."

* * *

><p>Next morning I texted Mum to tell her where I was, and me and Khalid went to stake out Aaron's house.<p>

"I was hoping the police would have come to talk to him," Khalid said. "I gave them his name, his address, everything..."

"Yeah."

"The fact that I couldn't give the castle's address didn't help..."

"No-one cares about old castles. And no-one would believe us for a fucking _second _if we told them what was really going on."

We reached the house. It didn't look like anyone was around. I strolled down the driveway and started to climb the back gate. Khalid watched me for a second and then joined in.

"He's not gonna be in, right?" he said, huffing and puffing. "They've gone off to Scotland..."

I landed on the other side and peered through the window. No-one was there.

"They wouldn't go just like that," I said. "They'd need to, I dunno...how would they even get there? Just all pile into a car and go off and have a war?"

"It's possible." Khalid landed with a loud thump. "How do we get in?"

I thought about it, and broke one of the windows.

"Mal!"

"What? This guy's a nutter anyway. We're saving people from him!" And I stuck my hand through the window and turned the lock, and wiggled through. On the other side there was a living room, but it was quiet and empty. I went out into the lobby, and on the stairs there was a suitcase...

"Mal!" Khalid shouted from outside. "Mal, I'm not...I can't climb through there!"

"Then keep guard!" I called, and went upstairs. In the room I took to be Aaron's there was another suitcase, and this one had a gun in it. I looked at that gun for a very long time, remembered Grandad and Mum and me wanting revenge that day, remembered the anger that bit at me every time I thought of that old woman walking the streets alive while Roseanna, Roseanna...

Someone opened the front door.

I panicked. I was about to run and hide, although God knew where I'd hide, and we'd broken the window anyway. And Khalid was still out there, and someone was coming up the stairs, right to the bedroom-

I grabbed the gun. Aaron came in.

"Freeze!" I said.

We looked at each other for a long few seconds. I put the gun down again.

"I'm not actually going to shoot you," I said. "_I _don't do that. You dick."

Aaron leaned forward and snatched it from my hand. He threw it in the suitcase, closed the suitcase, and glared at me.

"Mal, right?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know how you got in my house, don't really care, you got me? There are bigger things happening here than us. You don't want no part of it, I gathered that, and maybe that's for the best, you're just a little kid." In a weird way, his speech sounded _rehearsed_. "So go back to your folks, tell them the woman who killed your sister is about to be killed herself, tell them us voiceless are finally gonna have a voice."

"You're going to kill children," I said.

"Maybe I am," he said cooly. "You don't visit your kid's gravestones every day, you don't go to sleep at night knowing it's all gonna happen again! Because, little girl-" And I started to talk, to call him a dickhead, but he cut me off- "we are their _in-fer-i-ors_. Everything humankind's ever done- science, space, the internet- it's nothing to them, no acheivement, fuck all! Clever dogs that sometimes learn tricks. Their war, their big, awful war that Potter sorted out... it wasn't good versus evil, kid, it was a case of treating us like pets versus treating us like _animals_."

And my blood went cold. And I just watched him. And I wanted to _kill people_. Before, I'd wanted to kill Dolores, and now I wanted to kill everyone who'd put her into power, everyone who'd ever said a kind word to her, everyone related to or desended from her...and then it stopped. I knew what I was.

"You killing children, killing anyone, that's _wrong_."

"History, Mal, you ever take it?" said Aaron. "The slaves got freed cos they _fought_against that shit, not cos they sat back and took it and thought of the children." (Now might be a good time to mention that Aaron was black.) "We're going to have a war. It's been hovering over the history books for long enough, we're meeting up in Scotland soon and we're going to set fire to that castle, and hurt whatever comes out of it. Kids or not kids." And we stared at each other. "Get out, now," he finally said. "Go."

So I went. I grabbed Khalid from the back garden- literally grabbed him- and we ran down the street.

"I'm sorry I didn't see him come in, Mal-"

"Shut up!" I said. "That's not important now." Khalid looked hurt, but I didn't have time to comfort him. "God, he's going to kill people, they all are, those normal people are gonna walk up there and kill kids.  
>They really are." And I knew <em>why,<em>that was one of the worst things, I knew what'd driven them to it. It was horrible and wrong and it made perfect sense. "There's going to be a fucking war!"

We reached Khalid's house without even realising. I sat on the sofa. Khalid fetched me some tea and then went on the computer.

"Sorry," I finally said. "Oh God, I just treated you like shit."

"S'alright." Khalid said. He looked hard at me, and I knew he was thinking about last night. "Mal, you know Aaron and that lot won't get far. Hogwarts must have loads of contingency plans in case some uptight Muggles get ideas."

"So they'll all die, then."

"Maybe. Someone's going to. Loads of people. We've got to stop it." He was typing something on his computer.

"Dolores," I said. "She's gonna be their main target..." I didn't know what to say, if I was making myself as bad as they were. "I'll cheer, if she dies."

"I will too," Khalid said grimly. I put my tea down and went to him.

"What are you doing on there?"

"Booking us some tickets to Scotland."


	5. Be Mine

_Warning: This was written many months before the Norway shootings, but it's taken on a sudden worrying significance now. Essentially, there is talk of killing children for political reasons, although no-one actually carries out that act._

**Character Assassination**  
><em>5. Be Mine<em>

Telling our families where we going was interesting.

"Me and Mal are going to Scotland," Khalid told his parents, head bowed, when they returned. He'd explained the whole thing, and they'd barely said a word. "To...put things right."

Khalid's parents looked at each other and it was Fatima, his mum, who spoke first.

"The things that took Leila. Will they be there?"

And we looked at each other, we hadn't thought of that.

"No," said Khalid. "I think they're...gone now."

"No-one on earth is stupid enough to keep those things around," I said.

"Hussain," Fatima said, in a nervous voice, "talk them out of it."

Khalid's father looked at us all. Me especially, and he said, "We're coming too."

Khalid nodded as if he'd seen that coming. "I booked six tickets," he said.

"Six?" I asked.

"The other two are for your mum and grandad."

* * *

><p>So I went back home, and talked to them.<p>

"So if you want to come," I finished lamely, "we have two tickets. But I don't think you should. I mean, it's dangerous."

"We'd be bloody idiots to let you go on your own, then," Mum said. "Dad? You're gonna need your gun."

And just like that, he went upstairs and returned with the gun. I watched as he started cleaning it out.

"Mum, people are gonna die. Actually going to die." It was one of those things that took forever to sink in. "We're going into a fucking war!"

Mum went to make a cuppa. "I've been talking to Moira," she said, not looking at me.

"Who now?"

"Hermione Granger's mother. Moira. The one who told us about Dolores in the first place."

"Oh." And I thought of her reading messages saying her daughter deserved to die and rot. "What'd she say to you?"

"Everything you've said. That there's gonna be a fight."

"Is she coming to Scotland? I mean, her daughter..."

"I think she will." Mum sighed. "Everyone's gonna to come to Scotland, things will blow up like fuck. We knew this was coming." And I thought, we're the only people in the whole world who know, us people living just outside the magic. We know. And heck, the whole _planet _could go up in smoke here, all that raw power around...

"Hermione Granger's mother. Be cool to meet her. Is her husband gonna come too?"

"I dunno. They're divorced."

* * *

><p>A day later we touched down in Scotland, we went to the hotel Khalid had booked for us, and we sat, in Grandad's room, wondering what to do next. Khalid had his laptop perched on his lap, and he had the forum open, and it looked like nothing was happening. There was one message from John saying he was staying out of things and the British government were turning a blind eye. I'd expected that completely.<p>

Khalid had chosen the hotel very carefully, and in the distance you could _just _make out a castle. It looked like a ruin, but we knew better.

"We've got to go there," I said. "Straight to the castle. And wait for something to happen."

"And after that, what?" said Khalid's dad. "We have one gun. And we are putting ourselves into _big_trouble."

"You don't even have a flipping license for that gun," Mum told Grandad.

We sat around.

"You kids aren't coming," Mum said, out of the blue. "We talked about it on the plane."

"What?"

"When something happens, you're staying here. Where it's safe."

"Mum, we're the ones who fucking-"

"Would you please mind your language," she snapped. She didn't mind me swearing at home, but there were other people around now. "You're not joining us in this."

"We're old enough," Khalid said, looking at his parents.

"You're _not coming_," his dad said. And then he turned to the others. "Jeremy. I have my little telescope in a bag. We can keep an eye on the castle, see if anyone approaches..."

"We need to keep watch day and night," Fatima said. "We'll organise shifts."

I stared out at the castle while they talked. I imagined Roseanna seeing it for the first time, crossing the lake, so many people, so many lights-

Most the people she'd known at Hogwarts were _dead_...

"Mal," said Mum, "you and Khalid have to make sure we've got an alibi, alright?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it looks a bit weird, us all on holiday together, stuffed up in three rooms. So we're cousins, yeah?" And me and Khalid looked at each other. "Hussain's my cousin, who I've only met a few times, and we all decided to go to Scotland. To check out old castles and stuff. So if anyone asks, this is all perfectly normal, yeah?"

I almost rolled my eyes. "Okay."

"For God's sake, Mal, you can't have thought we'd have let you walk in to this."

"Not after losing kids already," said Grandad.

The room was quiet, and me and Khalid nodded. Outside the sun was setting, and the castle seemed to change. It looked like a monster, black against the yellow, on the horizon. A cliche, but that's what it looked like.

* * *

><p>In order to keep up the pretence that we were all on holiday, we went out shopping the next day. Grandad and Hussain stayed behind to watch through the telescope, and we all went into town. Me and Khalid went off on our own while our mothers went shoe shopping, and we sat in a cafe and had tea. Khalid paid.<p>

"I'm sorry about that night," he said, as soon as we'd sat down. "You know, when I..."

"It's cool, really it is."

"I just feel so embarrassed about it all."

"Well, don't." I glanced around the cafe. Everything looked so _normal_. And Khalid looked so sad. Then again, he had more than a good reason to. "I meant to thank you, actually. Kinda. For saying I was the only girl you'd ever like."

Khalid almost choked on his tea. "You are! I mean...I've never had a girlfriend. And you're a girl, and you're my friend..." He looked at me desperately. "I know you probably don't like me in the same way."

I thought about it. I came up with a hundred different things and I looked at Khalid hard. And I inexplicably thought of my mum and dad, and then I thought of how I'd never wanted a long-term relationship, no reason I could think of, I just didn't...and I said, "We should have sex."

"What?"

"We nearly did before, so there's nothing to stop us."

"But...you mean..._how_?" He caught himself. "No, I don't mean that! But our parents are here!"

"We'll get a room."

"We've got a room! With our parents in it!"

"A _different _room. Wanna do it? Can I get a yes?"

"Yes," Khalid practically squeaked. And we got up and walked back to the hotel, barely exchanging a word, and we went up to the top floor.

"I used to work in a hotel," I explained to him. "Sometimes they leave rooms unlocked on days the staff can't be arsed." I ran down the corridor, trying each door. One of them was open, and the room was clean with the keys on the table. I shoved Khalid in and locked the door from the inside. "Right. Get your pants off."

"What?"

"Come on!"

He did, and we got under the covers. Things happened. And heck, I'll be honest, I've slept with four guys and he wasn't as good as any of them, but better than I expected considering it was his first time. And intense. "You're everything I ever wanted," he said towards the end, and I thought, oh God, I'm having sex with a guy who might actually _love _me. Has that ever happened before? That's never happened before.

"You're everything I ever wanted too," I gasped, and it was sort of true at that point. Anyway, once we'd finished we cleaned up pretty quickly, left the room as we'd found it and went out to the hotel grounds. We sat under a tree.

"Mal," said Khalid, "I want you to be my girlfriend."

"This doesn't mean I have to marry you, does it?"

"No," He looked hurt. "I just want to be around you. A lot."

"Sorry," I said. "For the marriage comment." Khalid looked so hopeful, I just wanted to hug him. "S'just, Khalid, relationships aren't that easy, y'know. I've never actually been what you'd call a proper girlfriend..."

"Then be mine."

I think it was the romantic tone of the words that got me. I thought about it. "Okay."

"Really?"

"Yes. I'll be your girlfriend."


	6. The Children Of The Revolution

_Warning: This was written many months before the Norway shootings, but it's taken on a sudden worrying significance now. Essentially, there is talk of killing children for political reasons, although no-one actually carries out that act._

**Character Assassination**  
><em>6. The Children Of The Revolution<em>

That night me and Khalid slept in our different rooms, our parents totally oblivious. And me totally horny. When someone came into my room I hoped it was him, and I said, "Khalid?"

"Fuck, no!" Mum whispered. "Why're you awake?"

"What the fuck? It's two am, why're _you _awake? And sneaking into my room?"

"Mal," Mum said, "it's starting."

I got up.

"I didn't mean to wake you," Mum said. "I thought you were asleep, I came to leave a note. Mal, we have to go. And you stay here."

I snatched the note. I read it. It was short and to the point and ended with "We love you." And my blood went cold.

"Don't be fucking stupid!" I hissed at her.

I charged out into the corridor and Khalid was there too, arguing with his dad. We all sort of collided, and Mum and Hussain desperately shushed us.

"Shut up!" Mum whispered. "Everyone'll hear us."

Grandad came out of his room with a torch.

"We're not letting you leave without us!" I said loudly.

"Shush!"

It was dark and it was chaos. Khalid grabbed my hand.

"We're coming." he said.

Grandad started to storm towards the stairs. "Let them come."

"Dad!"

"We can't stop them. Least this way we can keep an eye on them."

"We promise we'll be careful." Khalid said.

Hussain was fuming, but he nodded at Khalid and we all went down the stairs, through the quiet lobby, and out the door. We went through the car park, our little army, stones crunching under our feet. I swear, that walk across the car park took _ages_, probably because we were all wondering if we were going back. Not wondering it out loud, but still wondering it.

And we got out into the field, among trees in the almost complete dark, and something jumped out at us.

"_Fuck_!"

But whatever it was gave a little gasp of relief and lunged for Mum and hugged her. While the rest of us caught our breath, Mum said, "This is Moira."

"Mrs Granger?" I gasped.

"Yeah," said Moira. "Yeah." She was gasping too. She'd been running. "Listen, we warned our daughter, me and Trev, and she's gone up there, our girl's up there. Sharon, the safest thing is to turn around, all of you, go back."

"What's happening?" Grandad asked.

"They blew holes in the place. The kids are being evacuated, and the Ministry of Magic's flying in, and I think..." I knew what she was going to say. "...I think people are dead." We all stood there. "And I think Dolores Umbridge is there too." That, I hadn't expected.

"Right," said Fatima, and there was a world of fear and anger in that word. "We're not leaving. Unless you want to take the kids out of here."

"No!" me and Khalid both said.

"Please," said Moira. "You'll be hurt. And it...I know what happened to you, Mr Abdel, and you, Sharon..." Her eyes hit the ground. "But this has gone way past madness. Go home."

"Home is where our daughter is," Hussain said grimly, and he began walking past her.

"What are you trying to do?" Moira called. "Who are you trying to defend?" But as we walked, she fell in with us. And from somewhere, there was a war-like noise, an explosion, some shouts and screams...

"Run!" Mum said.

So we ran, towards it. Moira was shouting something about her ex-husband, and she got out a mobile phone but it wasn't working. And we stumbled and ran and there it was, the castle, all these little pinpricks of light around and inside it, green beams-

Something stirred in my head about green being the colour of the killing curse, Roseanna had said, these things were like a million gunshots to a wizard...

Khalid ran ahead, even as his father shouted at him not to. And I ran too, and everyone else behind me, running past discarded relics of a past that wasn't even ours, running, running, past things we weren't even supposed to be seeing, I was sure, running-

-I fell over a dead body.

I fell so I was actually looking into its eyes, which wasn't actually the worst experience of my life but was pretty bloody horrible. Because it was Matthew, the bloke from the meeting, the one who'd been led here by Aaron. He'd been cut in half. And I wanted to be sick.

Khalid saw and doubled back and looked down at it too.

"Come on, Mal," he said, and pulled me up. Then he knelt down and closed the corpse's eyes. And Mum and Moira and everyone else collided with us.

"_Don't run on ahead_!" Hussain shrieked at Khalid, so viciously that flecks of spit came out. "You could have been that!" And he pointed violently to Matthew's corpse.

There was smoke in the air, and there was starting to be more, and we realised we were in some sort of sports field. There were seats and hoops and broomsticks on the grass. And yells, off in the distance.

"The spells are coming down," Moira said. "We can see it, we can see it for what it really is." And we could. And it...

...was a castle, and a forest, and a lake. Not scary. Just a place. I felt weirdly disappointed.

Khalid began to run again. His father tore after him, and the rest of us followed, and then we saw them. Aaron and his army. Not the small amount of people we'd expected, but _hundreds_. And some were carrying banners, some were carrying guns, _viv la revolution_. _Vie la revolution? _I dunno any French. And Aaron was in front. And someone else was there too, a woman levitating above the crowds, shouting things we couldn't hear, and Moira saw her too-

"_Hermione_!"

Hermione didn't hear her, though. And as we drew nearer she shouted again, her voice echoing out like magic. Which it was. "The death count is six. I implore you to keep it that way. Go home. There's no-one here but emergency personnel and none of them have any wish to harm you." And her voice was shaking.

"_You'll wipe our brains_!" shrieked Aaron.

Mum was staring intently at a man among the crowd, a man I could now see was wrestling his way through, and she turned and whispered to Moira just as Hermione began shouting again. "It may be for the best. Do you _want_to have lived through what you've lived through tonight?"

"OF COURSE WE FUCKING DO!" roared Aaron, and the chant came up from the crowd, _of course we fucking do, of course we fucking do_-

"Trevor!" Moira yelled, and it took me a second to realise she was talking about her ex-husband, who was the man in the crowd, who had just reached Hermione. He had virtually collapsed at his daughter's feet, and she stared down and recognised him, and one word echoed out over the shouting-

"Dad?"

And then Aaron fired his gun. And all hell broke loose again.


	7. Build Me An Aeroplane

Warning: This was written many months before the Norway shootings, but it's taken on a sudden worrying significance now. Essentially, there is talk of killing children for political reasons, although no-one actually carries out that act.

**Character Assassination**  
><em>7. Build Me An Aeroplane<em>

Moira ran through the crowds even as people started shooting. It was a miracle she survived, seriously, and man was that day short of miracles. She reached her family and I didn't see what happened next, because Hussain pulled us all away, behind a tree, to safety. And some people flickered into the crowd in bursts of smoke, and light was all around and people were dropping like flies. And, because whatever spell she'd done was still working, I heard Hermione say tearfully, "Mum, Dad, you shouldn't have come, it's not your world." And I'll never know what Moira and Trevor's answer to that was, but I like to think it was, "Well, you're our world," although if it had been me, I'd have added, "And you're a stupid cow for thinking people don't have the right to their own memories." But enough of that. Almost everyone was on the ground now, not dead, still breathing, except for Aaron and a few more who were dodging attacks, and Hermione and the Grangers. I wanted to run out, although I didn't know what for.  
>For some reason I was thinking of Nymphadora, and her dying in this very place. I didn't run, none of us did, and we heard Aaron shout-<p>

"_You're monsters! All of you! You killed our children! You stole our memories! You rule our world! You-" _And the rest of what he said was lost in gunfire as he fired wildly at Hermione and her parents, and missed entirely. Then a beam of light hit him and he fell.

None of us were sure what to do. One of the robed people who'd been firing spells walked over to Hermione, wand raised, but she shook her head. And as everyone stared out at the field of bodies, streaks of smoke crashed to the ground. More people arrived. An old woman with black hair, men and women in greens and blues, an important-looking black man in purple and-

"No," said Mum.

It was _her_.

And none of us had ever seen her in the flesh before, and we just stared. Dolores Umbridge looked around, and I noticed that although the others held wands she didn't. The world had gone quiet now the fighting was over, and Hermione had taken the spell from her voice, so we had to listen hard to make out what was being said.

"-_never _happened before," one of the women was saying. "Whatever possessed them-"

"Get as many from the Secrecy Department as possible," the black man said. "Wipe their memories, and put them back where they came from."

"Minister," Hermione said in a quavering voice, "These are my parents."

The Minister looked down at Moira and Trevor, and Moira said, "You can't."

"I can," said the Minister. "But I won't." He turned to Hermione. "Take them home."

Hermione led her parents away and that was the last I ever saw of her. The men and woman in the flowing robes began levitating the bodies, like they were fucking crates, and I wanted to shout to treat them with respect, especially the dead ones, but I couldn't. And Dolores Umbridge started speaking.

"A rebellion! An uprising! Never in a hundred years-"

"The times are changing, Dolores," the Minister almost spat. "Go and gather the Muggle weapons. _And stay in my sight_." And Dolores started walking around, head still held high, gathering the guns and knifes and holding them in disgust, and she was walking towards us, so close-

_Who are you defending_?

"Let's get her," Hussain whispered. She had stormed right away from the Minister and the others, and was walking towards the disgarded machine-gun on the ground right next to us. Carrying all those firearms and blades, she looked stupid. A parody of the Wicked Witch of the West, no broomsticks, just guns.

No-one was looking, and she was so close. Grandad dived at her, and before she could scream, he punched her three times- sharply, _there, there _and _there- _and she collapsed, and we quickly tied her up and started to drag her away.

* * *

><p>In the middle of the woods, she came to. We threw her to the ground. She stared at us in appalled shock, and tried to scream, but was too shocked to even manage that.<p>

"Muggles!" she spat, and fought against the ropes. "Vicious! Vile! If I had my wand you'd be _toads_!"

"You don't, and we're not," Hussain said. "We're going to talk to you and then we're going to kill you." And I felt the ripple of fear go round, and I knew I didn't want to be the one to kill her. Or if I wanted her to die at all. Somehow.

"Our daughter," Fatima said to her, her voice shaking, "she was killed. More than killed. Because of you."

Umbridge ignored her. "The Minister will come looking for me. All of them, they're on their way. And then you'll pay, you animals." She gave a little laugh. Things didn't look quite right.

"Why," said Grandad, fists clenched, "did they let you out of prison?"

"Azkaban is closed," Umbridge said. "A misguided idea, our own kind shouldn't be left to rot, not when _your _kind outnumber us a thousand to one." And something in her eyes- fear, maybe- flickered in momentarily. "No more prisons. People must contribute to society. I am now bound to the Minister, serving as his...his assistant."

"His slave, you mean," Khalid said.

"I still have authority! I have authority over _you_!" There was madness in her eyes. And the moon was coming out. "Flithy, nasty Muggle scum!"

"Enough," said Grandad, and he pointed the gun at her head. "Tell us why you killed our daughters."

"I killed no-one."

"You ordered them killed."

"You're like Hitler," Khalid said. "And they'd have hung him if they'd caught him."

"Don't mock me with your Muggle legends-"

"Legends!" Grandad spat. "Where were you when Nazis were killing children?" And something occured to me, occured to all of us, and Khalid ran forward and stood glaring down.

"Where _were _you?" he asked. "Any of you? All that magic, all that power, and there's been two world wars! What were the wizards doing then? What were they doing during genocides? During famines? During _9/11_? During a hundred, million deaths that could've been prevented!"

Umbridge spat in his face. Khalid flinched and did nothing.

"Nothing to us. Muggles killing muggles," said Umbridge, her head craned expectantly, waiting for her rescuers. Hussain turned away from her.

"It ends tonight," he said to us.

"It won't," said Fatima, in a voice so low I think only I heard it.

"I don't want my daughter doing any killing," Mum said. "You hear that, Mal? You're _never _going to be no killer!"

"I know," I said, hurt she'd considered it, that I still would.

"Help me!" Umbridge shouted. "The Muggles attacked me! Help!"

Someone was running through the forest-

"I'll do it," said Grandad. "Gotta be done."

"It'll change you forever," Mum said, but hesitantly.

"We'll both do it," said Hussain. "Me and Jeremy. We'll both shoot her. We'll never know who actually _killed _her, whose was the fatal shot. Alright?"

"Alright," said Fatima. "Do it." And then someone burst in on us, appearing from the shadows of the forest like a wraith, not a monster, not a dark lord, but a mother holding a gun-

"_Dolores_!" snarled Moira Granger.

Umbridge glanced up at her, and laughed, a high cold laugh. "I saw you run to your daughter, Muggle! Where is she now?"

"My daughter stood above a field of the dead and the living and told them she had the right to wipe their minds," said Moria, her voice so vicious. "All her childhood my daughter hurt no-one, all she wanted to do was read and learn! And that's a life, that's a Muggle life, that's a _good _life! And you took her, you and your world, you threw her to the fire and made her _like you_!"

"Hermione Granger is nothing like me," said Umbridge.

"She is like you _enough,_" said Moira, and I saw Trevor, Hermione's father, standing behind her just watching. "You killed our children, you stole our memories, you rule our world. But you can't have my daughter. Not my daughter," she whispered, "you _bitch_."

Even tied up and at our mercy, Umbridge's nostrils flared at the swear word. "I have no wish to," she said. "Your world, your pathetic, colourless, magic-free world, it may keep her. And I may be a martyr to my cause."

She'd basically told us she didn't mind us killing her. We all were silent. I looked at the night sky. A light was streaking across it, an aeroplane, and I wondered if there was any wizard living who could build an_ aeroplane_...

Trevor spoke for the first time. "Before you die, you have one chance to apologize. It won't save you, but it might go a little way towards getting you out of hell."

"Never. You are lower than _mud_-"

Moira shot her in the head. I saw it for just one second, a face, Umbridge's face, with nothing on it. Then she fell face-down into the dirt. And nothing happened. No-one moved. No-one cheered.

Khalid clutched my hand.

"I don't believe it," he mumbled, "I wanted this for most've my life-"

Moira was breathing heavily. She spat on the body, and turned to her ex-husband, who held her. She acknowledged the rest of us for the first time, and gave us a little nod.

"Australia was _rubbish_," she said. And started to walk away.


	8. The Death Of Dolores Umbridge

**Character Assassination**  
><em>8. The Death Of Dolores Umbridge<em>

The rest of us looked down at what was left of Umbridge. Moira and Trevor weren't far away when the streaks of light came, hit the ground, turned into people. The Minister waved his wand and Hermione's parents fell to the floor, and then I did too, along with everyone else. I couldn't move my arms or legs, and I was shit scared, and somehow I was holding Khalid's hand.

"Don't hurt my children!" Mum shouted, although for years and years she'd had only one kid. "Don't hurt us!"

The Minister stood over us, backed by twenty others, and he scared me more than Voldemort. "_Muggles_," he said. "Dolores Umbridge, killed by Muggles!"

"Let the children go!" shouted Hussain. The Minister barely acknowledged him. He turned away from us, gathered his people around, and they talked quietly. Deciding our fate while we lay in the mud. I wondered if Aaron was still alive...

"Mal," whispered Khalid.

"What?"

"I love you."

I couldn't move, and now I couldn't laugh.

"Oh God, you don't know what you're in for."

"I love you," Khalid said again, fiercely. "You're the most amazing person I've ever met, I've always loved you. Other girls wanted to be Katie Price or Paris Hilton. _You _wanted to be _Batman_..."

Something exploded in the background, another streak of light a burning red, and someone else walked out of the forest. A bloke with black hair and glasses, quite tall, pretty unremarkable, but I knew who it was. And he joined the others, and he looked right at us, and I was seeing him for the first time and all I could think of was that he looked like a whiter, scruffier, thicker, _duller_ version of Khalid.

"I think I love you too," I said to Khalid. "Oh, _fuck_."

The Minister of Magic stepped forward. I held my breath. And I thought about dying, or about going home never having known about _anything_, never having had a bloke tell me he loved me...never knowing what was out there...losing _everything_.

"There was a Muggle uprising, quickly put down," the Minister said to us. "During this, Dolores Umbridge walked into the Forbidden Forest and was ambushed by centaurs. They killed her. They've been dealt with. No-one else was involved. All memories were wiped."

"_Don't wipe ours_!" I shrieked. "_That bastard over there just told me he loved me_!"

Harry Potter said, "He's not going to."

I stared up at him. Him, for some reason, I wasn't scared of. "He's not?"

"No."

"You can take this one victory," said the Minister. "No-one would ever believe you if you told." Our arms and legs were freed. We started staggering to our feet. "This will never, ever happen again."

"It shouldn't," said Moira darkly. Although she was a way away, her voice seemed to echo around.

The Minister looked at her and I waited for him to say something good. He didn't. "We'll send you back to where you came from," he said. And we were all so relieved and so glad to be alive that we barely questioned it. Mum hugged me, Fatima hugged Khalid, men and women in flowing robes reached for magic wands...

"This will happen again!" Khalid shouted suddenly. "There will be other Voldemorts! Your world _invented _him and it'll do it again! And you, you could kill us all right here and the world would never even know!"

"But we _won't_," said the Minister.

"That's not good enough!"

"It'll have to be, for now," said someone. It took me a few seconds to realise it was me. "We won the battle. We kind of got what we came for. And we can't have a war, not with all them dead bodies we saw in just one day, we _couldn't_. Let's go."

And we went.

* * *

><p>We were sent back to the hotel, in our rooms in the dark as if we'd never left them. We all huddled together, on the bed, on the floor, not quite broken but totally out of it. Mum slept in Grandad's lap, and Hussain was the only one who moved that night, to the corridor clutching his mobile. He called his oldest son, I heard him talk quietly and start to cry. Fatima went outside and started to cry too. Khalid was asleep, on the bed, next to me.<p>

I knew what was going on. Hakan had been by Leila's bed for days, waiting for a change. If Umbridge died, maybe Leila would return, maybe she'd wake up and open her eyes. But she hadn't. I suppose there had been no logical reason to think that she might, but we were dealing with _magic_, logic went out of the window a long time ago.

When Khalid woke up he went to cry with his parents. I sat with Mum and Grandad and thought about Dad and Roseanna. Dad especially, for some reason. He'd have wanted to be around. He'd have wanted to avenge his daughter. _Had _we even avenged her? Someone bad was dead, but a lot of reasonably good people were probably dead as well. And I'd seen someone's _face_ just _explode_...

I slept. In the morning it was just me and Khalid in the room, and light was streaming in. He was sitting on the windowsill, staring out.

"Leila's still dead," he said softly.

I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry."

Khalid climbed down, slightly awkwardly, from the windowsill. "I still love you."

"I still love _you_, mate."

He smiled a little. "Cool."

We had breakfast in the hotel. Mum, Grandad and the others were packing our stuff. The sun was out, so we sat in the hotel garden, on a bench, all alone.

"She'll never kill anyone again," I said. "Dolores Umbridge won't."

"You think Hermione Granger might?"

I thought about it. "No."

"She probably won't." Khalid agreed. He stared off into the distance. "But there _will_be other Voldemorts. They're waiting in the dark right now." And then, in a sudden rush of decisiveness, he stood up and rummaged in his pocket. For one second I thought he was going to ask me to marry him, but he just pulled out a pen and paper.

"Science," he said.

"What?"

"Maybe science is the answer. Maybe science can do what magic can't. They can't come up with an answer, all those wizards, so perhaps it's up to us. Maybe we can still save her, and everyone else."

I didn't know what to say, so I said "Yes."

"Things aren't just _destroyed_," Khalid said. "Things just get moved, or transformed. Why should souls be any different?" He drew a square within a circle. "Say that circle is Leila and the square is her soul. Where does the square go? A Dementor takes it, but where does it _go_?"

"I don't know," I said sadly.

"Will you marry me?"

I blinked.

"Just kidding," Khalid said, and sat down. "I saw your face a minute ago."

We sat in silence and waited to go home. I held his hand, though. As we sat with each other an owl flew past. And I thought, stupid fucking owl, who're you going to?

And then I held his hand some more.

* * *

><p>FOURTEEN YEARS LATER<p>

* * *

><p>I did marry Khalid, actually. It turned out to be awesome. We have a little girl, Rosie. Rosie Abdel Young.<p>

What happened? I got hold of Aaron again. It was obvious his memories had been wiped. He thought his daughters died in a car crash, and he worked for an insurance company, and he lived alone. I spied on him from behind a hedge and tried to see this man as the man who'd opened fire on Hermione and her parents. I couldn't.

Hermione didn't grow up to be the next Umbridge. In fact, I gather she turned out all right. I still kept in touch with her parents, same us the rest of us did. They came to our wedding, too. They'd got back together at this point. Which was nice.

During our last phone call Moira told me a story about Hermione's husband. "Went for a driving test, Ron did. He bragged to Harry about how he'd done a spell on the instructor, modified his memory, just so he could pass." I waited for her to slag him off, but she just said sadly, "And that's a _good man_." I knew what she was saying. Good men kept slaves, in the olden days.

Anyway.

I like to think we didn't stand back and do nothing. But when I sleep at night I don't see Dementors anymore, I see dead bodies on the field and a woman's face explode in blood. I don't mind. I was there, I was involved, I helped kill Dolores Umbridge, and I can put up with nightmares. I'm just glad that neither me or Khalid were the ones who actually killed her.

Grandad is still alive. He dotes on his great-granddaughter.

Mum runs a hotel now. She's had a string of boyfriends, but none of them went anywhere. I think she loved my dad too much. Somedays I hope she'll take up with someone else, and some days I hope she doesn't.

Khalid teaches political science at the local college. Boring as hell, but I love him. And we both love our daughter. Rosie. Roseanna would have loved her too. We take her to the graveyard sometimes, and we take her to the hospital. Rosie says she wants to make Auntie Leila better. Sometimes she says she _will_.

Who knows if she'll recieve an owl-letter herself one day, my only daughter? I couldn't stand it if she did, if she ran away to a world I couldn't enter. If she grew up to be a good person who still thought stealing memories was the morally right thing to do. Cos I'm looking at her now, my Rosie. She's drawing a square, a square within a circle.

Then she looks at me. And smiles. And keeps drawing.


End file.
